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It's the beginning of mass amounts of hosted VPS/torrent solutions and SFTP traffic.

Laws have never once curbed popular behavior without huge losses of life and civil war. So until there is the decapitation, or drawn-and-quartered rule, I sincerely doubt behavior modification will be the outcome.

Trying to ban SFTP traffic is not going to work, and trying to play whack-a-mole with VPS/seedbox providers will be fruitless.

They would rather deal with online services than P2P. That's what this has been about this the beginning of this ridiculous situation. The old media barons do not want to see a world in which people can be both consumers and distributors of entertainment or software, because that turns their whole business upside down. Peer to peer networks, and yes, that includes the Internet itself, are the targets; they want this to look more like cable TV systems, where consumers have consumption devices and where distributors have to negotiate deals and fight things out in courts.

The RIAA and MPAA love playing whack-a-mole; they have decades of experience doing it, they have laws on their side, they have public sympathy on their side. Suing an service provider off the face of the Earth doesn't really get the public angry, and it can result in that service provider making a deal that rakes in cash. Suing some college kid, some working class parent, some old computer-illiterate grandmother -- those things get the public angry (which is only tolerable up to the point where they start voting for less industry friendly politicians), they have no chance of producing a profitable deal, and they involve a party that has little money to give.

Well, then in the end they won't get any money from me. If the Internet turns into that, then I'll just say "fuck this" and cancel it. I don't have cable TV now (by choice) and I certainly had a life before the Internet. I don't think I'm alone in this sentiment, either. If they really want to kill the Golden Goose, go ahead and let them try, but I don't think so.

That is terrible -- the Internet is supposed to be for us, that is, for the computer users of the world. We are supposed to have a network where we can communicate freely, where there are no borders or region codes or deals to negotiate. If the copyright industry is allowed to hijack our system, the answer should be to make a new Internet.

By the time the Internet looks like cable TV, living life without an Internet connection will be very difficult. Banking, shopping, communications (voice, video, text) will all basically involve the Internet. Most people want the superbowl and will not boycott the Internet if it becomes the only way to get their entertainment, even if they are losing the freedoms the Internet was supposed to provide (which most people have not really had to chance to enjoy, due to the generally poor understanding of computers).

Let's put it this way: how many people will give up on Facebook in the Internet-as-cable-TV scenario?

That is terrible -- the Internet is supposed to be for us, that is, for the computer users of the world. We are supposed to have a network where we can communicate freely

It will be when someone develops a system kind of like FreeNet or ToR that actually works
well for content distribution and consumption without revealing responsible IP addresses, doesn't require any advanced technical knowledge to publish and update content, is very fast, scales very well, and replaces BitTorrent and other protocols, which only provide file transfer, not content discovery and easy publication of media.

The Canadian music industry negotiated the "blank media tax" back when people were taping from cassette to cassette. They got a sweetheart of a deal, in which I pay the music industry to record my own music that's copyrighted by me. In exchange, the public can copy music for personal use without breaking copyright. That's how it works in Canada.Since the rise of p2p, the same music industry is trying to sue people for downloading music. Unfortunately for them, the way the blank media tax loophole is wri

The blank media tax is a brilliant idea in my opinion. But yes, it seems to have been written for physical media and doesn't extend very well to the Internet.

Computers still have hard drives. It's not completely out of the question for the government to require consumers to report how much hard drive space is utilized for media storage, and charge a $/GB tax.

A lot of the infringement problems would go away though, if media companies would just be willing to license their content to end users for pe

Yeah, they could figure something out about the hard drive space. Just put a tiny tax on all drives if you want to, otherwise enforcement is a problem. But the real problem is copying. As I recall, the deal is that you can make a copy of something for your own use, but you can't distribute copies. In my opinion, P2P should count as distributing copies, because the effect is the same. But yes, I know there's a counter-argument.

Computers still have hard drives. It's not completely out of the question for the government to require consumers to report how much hard drive space is utilized for media storage, and charge a $/GB tax.

Oh yes it is completely out of the question. In the US at least it's called the 4th amendment. The government has no right or need to know what I have on my computer. Further how should the delineate between my own personal videos shot with my camera and movie files. Or the music I create, the music I buy and download, the music I buy and platform shift, and the music I pirate.

Blank media tax is not brilliant. It presumes a crime/civil infringement will absolutely occur. Should I have to pay copyright tax for taping my kids birthday? Its an evil foisted upon you by those that wish to farm your income.

And I'm of the opinion that song is perfect example of why we need ubiquity clauses in copyright, a bit similar to trademarks. Happy birthday ubiquity is so high it's effectively a cultural artifact and society should be able revoke copyright on that basis.

You have a far better chance of catching them if you don't drive them underground.

If we were talking about fighting censorship, that would be a good point. But we're talking about law enforcement. Whether it's pirating or drug dealing, you can't let them carry out their business and bust them for it too. It's either legal or it's not.

wrong. it is not ok to enforce laws made by politicians in the pockets of power and money grubbing scum such as the RIAA. It is not ok to allow "allegations" of infringement without a shred of proof to be the basis for denying anyone the service for which they have paid.

No, not always. Laws are far from perfect. In doubtful cases, yes, enforce the law. But this case is not in doubt. These anti-piracy laws are far too extreme. Too easy to twist such power to spy on innocent citizens, silence dissent, push unrelated agendas such as a crusade against porn or drugs or terrorism, and leverage the even more extreme privileges the content cartels think they would like. These laws are bad. I don't think it's possible to have any anti-piracy law that doesn't trample upon other vital freedoms.

And now, try to wrap your head around this idea: piracy is good. It is good in the sense that the public would benefit more if there was no such thing as a monopoly on copying. The public does not benefit as much from the current custom of trying to lock everything down, and the waste of millions on monopolistic gouging, clinging to outdated, grossly inefficient distribution systems such as CDs, and enforcement and court cases, DRM, lobbying, and even public campaigning. Capt. Copyright was ludicrous, and if anything, only served to undermine the message they were trying to push. All these anti-piracy efforts are predicated on the notion that piracy is bad, and that copyright is the only way or the only fair way artists can make a living. No. Not only are the anti-piracy bills too extreme, the very foundational ideas behind them all are wrong. Some think they are pushing bad means to achieve a good end, but the end they seek is not good. Does the end justify the means? If you have to go all fascist and use force to achieve some good end, you ought to reexamine that end and ask, is it really good? Odds are, it is not.

Saving me money? Not at the price of due process and freedom! They should have no right to kick anyone off the Internet. That's like taking away the driver's license of someone accused-- accused, mind, not convicted-- of burglary, because logically they must have used a car to reach the target and haul away the goods. They don't need to convict anyone of anything, all they need do is make an accusation. So much for due process.

That is no longer true. We have government under control of wealthy elite, cartels. It is very much a disconnectd entity stealing from us, taking away our rights, turning our country into a fascist police state.

In the popular media we always hear about how negative workers unions are on the "free market" but those same pundits never say a word about corporate trade unions. If union busting is so great for the economy then lets bust up the corporate ones as well.

Hm...that's an interesting assertion...perhaps you meant "hard to monitor" or "I cannot see how this will be monitored," but unless you would like to point to a proof of hardness i.e. that either in an information theoretic sense or under some common cryptographic assumption it is hard to track Freenode transfers, I would not stake much on Freenode. It would not be beyond the RIAA or MPAA to hire some cryptanalysts to develop methods of attacking the security of Freenet, nor would it be beyond them to set up malicious Freenet nodes for that purpose.

It's impossible to monitor depending how you define that. Once something is inserted into freenet, it isn't "owned" by anyone in particular, and who you download something from isn't even aware they are the host. Kinda hard perhaps to prosecute someone for hosting copyright material when it isn't feasible for them to know what they are hosting.

Freenet has countermeasures against corruption by mpaa etc. how well it would hold up we would have to see if and when it is attacked.

This graduated system actually sounds like a big improvement over their old policy where some college kid would be downloading and sharing 1000's of songs, and then get hit by a subpoena by the RIAA's lawyers.

Now, they send out warnings and follow them up before taking further action. So the infringer gets feedback in time to change their behavior before they get served with a big lawsuit.

The old system of lawsuits is better for victims of the RIAA, as their rights are respected. The only reason this is being promoted as "positive" is because
the vultures need to move onto a new strategy to keep ahead of the judges, as the courts are growing wise to the years of abuse of the law.

Is that really true? Technically yes, you have your chance at getting due process before the courts.

If you're innocent: you're going to end up having to pay a lawyer and deal with the massively expensive legal system.

If you're guilty: you'll more than likely settle out of court for 3-4 grand, which is likely way more than the supposed losses suffered by the recording industry for your individual act of downloading and sharing.

If you end up in court in either situation and lose, chances are they will go for

The legal system is stacked against the common person in these situations.

This is the same justification proponents of "binding arbitration" use. Surprise! arbitration is also stacked against the common person, and so will this gentlemen's agreement between huge corporations. At least, in theory, you have a fighting chance in the legal system. In this system (and in arbitration), you're punished, period.

Rule of Thumb: Any agreement or contract that you were not part of writing is designed to screw you.

There is no fighting chance in the legal system. Judges don't like to grant dismissals or summary judgments, which means you have to litigate the case substantially. That means you've been punished regardless of outcome.

Fight pro se and you end up spending half your life in a courtroom or typing up documents, likely losing your job/etc in the process.

Have a lawyer go to court for you and you end up spending a fortune in fees.

The US legal system is a travesty of justice. They might as well replace summons

I suspect most people will "change their behavior" after the warnings or speed throttling by switching ISP's.

A lot of the infringers are probably children, who are not aware of the law or haven't learned to respect the law.
Their parents will call the ISP and get their internet turned back on after grounding their child.

In many areas of the US there isn't even a competing provider to switch to.

And I suspect ISPs will not be very reluctant to resume a service they were being paid for.

The problem is that MPAA/RIAA somehow think they're going to get more money from what they think are "consumers". The overwhelming majority people they're going after have no plans on giving their money to media distributors because they either don't have any or know better. Yet, they continue to waste their resources going after these "pirates" - who aren't really pirates because they're not profiting from their activities in any way.

The distributors are always complaining about how they're barely making ends meet.... perhaps if they didn't pay themselves millions of dollars they wouldn't have any problems? As I see it, they're just greedy assholes. They should do us all a favor and roll over and die. In a world where cost of distribution is very close to $0, there is no need for a digital media distribution company.

Actually you still need people with money to finance new artists and bands, advance the studio recording fees, and make them known to the public. This is not debatable. The problem is that all the MAFIAA don't do it for the love of music (and enough money to pay themselves a good salary - I have no problem with that), but for the love of money. And there is no end to the love of money for the sake of making money, and that is where the problem lies. This is not limited to the music industry, it's a sickness

Except that I think you heavily overestimate how much money is really needed.

I can rent a professional studio for several hours at a cost of a couple thousand dollars. I can also buy consumer grade recording equipment that sounds on par with the professional grade to the ear, for far less then the millions they front.

Their money goes into Hollywood Accounting. Ever notice how bands are always broke unless they become ultra popular (Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc...).

Actually you still need people with money to finance new artists and bands

People in any business need financing to get started with their business, if the costs are significant.
The costs of starting a band are much lower today than they were in the past.
But still, this is a service provided by banks; there isn't a market for dedicated companies just to finance bands.

and make them known to the public.

That is just marketing. You don't have to have a distributor or label to do that.
Labels may be able to do that more cost effectively at scale; for example,
they might have agreements in place with retailers, so the cost may be less for the band
to get their content on store shelves and marketed.

This is not debatable.

Sure it's debatable. You have essentially downgraded the record labels' status to
bank and marketing agency.

I think that's not the reason any band goes to a label.
Those services are easy to obtain through numerous competitors who would not demand such a high cut of the proceeds.

I think they go to the labels as a one-stop shop, to totally run the business for them, because the Labels
have experience at taking content and turning it to dollars, so they can concentrate on making music,
and avoid doing any of that "business stuff" themselves, which if done wrong, could cause them to fail.

The labels don't "finance them", the labels reduce their business risk.

The copyright lobbyists live in a world of services, a world where people are either consumers receiving service, or service providers who provide service. They love this world, because copyright fits very naturally into it -- the copyright holder can negotiate with the service providers, whose business interests compel them to enter into profitable deals. That is why they love the cable TV system -- the consumers are just leaf nodes, whose money can simply be siphoned upward to the businesses running the show.

Compare this to the Internet, where peer to peer networking thrives (and which is a peer to peer network itself). Sure, there are service providers online, but the truth is that unlike the cable TV system, the Internet does not require service providers to distribute entertainment -- anyone with an Internet connection can be a participant in entertainment distribution. Suddenly, the consumers are not just passive receivers whose wallets can be raided; they are participants in the distribution of entertainment, and they are not all party to an explicit deal with the copyright industry. They might receive their entertainment without having to pay for it, they might distribute the entertainment before or after the industry would have preferred, they might make entertainment available that embarrasses the industry.

The industry does not know how to rake in billions of dollars in profits in such a scenario. Thus they have simply resorted to attacking peer to peer itself. As long as people are only able to receive their entertainment from a distribution service, the industry is happy. They'll play that game, they'll sue and bargain with file sharing websites, because they understand the model and the websites have more to lose than some college kid. The endgame is for the Internet to become a fancy cable TV system, where there are channels, distribution regions, disputes between networks and copyright holders that leave consumers without entertainment, and most importantly, consumer systems will just be passive receivers.

Six strikes? Just a way to scare people away from peer to peer models, until there are enough TPMs and DRM systems to ensure that peer to peer networking is no longer possible.

Instead of Usenet or the Internet returning to the days of being networks for hackers and intellectuals, we are entering an even darker age. Now, when we are online, we need to make sure that we are encrypting everything, that our certificates are valid, that we are using an anonymity system, that our firewall is configured to block ranges of IP addresses known to be used by certain organizations, and that we stay up to date on the latest methods of attacking all these systems. The Internet is a depressin

1. Record innernets radio with streamripper, a free CLI app ported for Unix and Win32.
2. See how streamripper lays all the songs in your folder nice and neat with all the MP3 tag information intact.
3. Sort the folder on size in your favorite file manager and delete all the sub-megabyte commercials.
4. See how RIAA doesn't have a clue what's going on because it's like taping your songs on a boom box.
5. ????
6. Profit!

You know what they do to music these days? First of all, they use auto-tune to make it seem like Lindsey Lohan can actually stay on key, then they record the track so hot if you import it into Audacity it looks like a solid blob. All those square waves, that's clipping, but it makes the "artist" sound "edgy". When all the popular music is recorded like that, it doesn't matter if you get it at 64 kbps and listen with Dollar Store earbuds. So I go USENET for lossless, and to grab entire albums, including the cover art.

I'm a musician/song writer in addition to being a programmer. In the early days of Napster I was, to a large extent, on the side of copyright holders, but that's all changed radically over the years. It's sad in a way that things have pretty much reached the point where it's all but impossible to make money with music other than by touring or otherwise playing live...perhaps in a way that's a good thing. If the record industry didn't get hung up on bullshit like DRM and got out in front of this whole thing with DRM-free songs available much like on Amazon in, oh...I don't know...like 1999, it would be a very different world for the music industry right now.

As many here have pointed out, it's clear that the RIAA will continue to lobby, or do whatever it takes to turn the Internet as we know it into the likes of pay television, where we're just spectators. The ONLY thing that will stop this is if the whole industry just plains goes belly up, and is replaced by one that actually lives in the 21st century. While I don't download music illegally myself, at this point if the public chooses to "pirate" them into the fucking stone age I couldn't be happier, and I couldn't be happier at the reality that, from a technical standpoint, they'll never be able to stop it. Assholes...all of them...

Sorry for all those folks that don't have any other option! This also the reason I keep turning down all those 'amazing' Comcast deals... look --> a whole year at $1/month. Yeah, great deal until RCN is out of business and I don't have another option.

I didn't see this answered anywhere. I use bittorrent to download and seed Linux distros and the Wikipedia for schools disc. How much will this pointless crack down impact my legal and legitimate use of this service?

According to FAQ #4 "How does the system work?" [copyrightinformation.org], the process begins when a copyright owner reports your IP address and date to an ISP. To determine how much your service would be affected, I first need to know what copyright owner would report you. Or did you expect it to be something mickey-mouse like The Tetris Company complaining about the inclusion of Quadrapassel or tetris.el in a Linux distro?

The RIAA/MPAA are paying contractors to join bittorrent swarms and collect IP addresses of users sharing infringing content. They don't own the copyright to any Linux distro or Wikipedia distro so they should not be initiating an enforcement action against you for this.

Of course it's entirely possible that they can screw up and get their torrents confused and report everyone who is sharing a 'Wikipedia' repository as somebody sharing the latest Bieber album. In that case, y

I didn't see this answered anywhere. I use bittorrent to download and seed Linux distros and the Wikipedia for schools disc. How much will this pointless crack down impact my legal and legitimate use of this service?

Zero. I've only ever torrented once, and afterwards I got a message from my ISP stating that I had breached copyright. The message listed the exact file - "Hellboy 2," If memory serves. So they knew exactly what I had grabbed. Torrents will live on - Downloading copyright content on torrent

How much will this pointless crack down impact my legal and legitimate use of this service?

You will receive a letter, and then you will call your ISP, demand that they reduce your strike count because you were just downloading those Debian disks. The ISP will insist that their system is perfect, until you speak to a manager who will reduce your strike count, but only in one of many databases that only synchronize increases in the count. Eventually you'll be in court, suing your ISP, only to be told that your service agreement says that you have no legal recourse.

I stopped buying anything with the Sony label years ago when they won a $250,000 suit against a 14 year old girl and her single mother on a disability pension for downloading a few songs. Unfortunately I already used up my vote so I couldn't stop buying when Sony when they recently jacked up prices on Whitney Houston music to cash in on her death.
Start with the worst offenders in the RIAA/MPAA...put them out of business...then pick off the next. What they win in lawsuits they'll lose in sales.
Sony used to be an innovative company with brilliant engineers and reliable products...then they fired their engineers and replaced them with lawyers...they figured they could make more money being copyright trolls...tell them they were wrong...vote with what you buy.

If my ISP were to throttle my service to a level below what I am paying them for, I would simply switch providers. They're not my parents, they're not part of the government. They either provide the service I'm paying for or I will go to a competitor and pay their competitor. I don't have to worry about being in breach of a contract because if there was one (which there isn't) then they'd be the ones in breach.
The only way we are going to stop the MPAA and RIAA is to take to the streets in mass, and not

Largo, Florida. I can get wired broadband service from Bright House Networks, Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, Knology. There are several companies in my area that sell "wireless" to the house, and of course there is satellite based service.That is just for the line. I don't know about all of them, but several of these allow you to use their line and other companies for the ISP (the connection to the internet). So that's an option, too.

Pity that many folks don't have the choices they should have for high sp

The ISP is not the one doing the monitoring, it's the RIAA/MPAA hired contractors, who will then complain to your ISP. In theory, they should only be doing this for things they own the copyright for, but you can bet mistakes will be made. Afterall, why bother with accuracy when they know anybody using bittorrent must be a pirate?

There are no technical facets to six strikes - the ISPs aren't doing deep packet inspection or the like. This is just copyright holders monitoring torrents to compile a list of infringers, which they then use to complain to the appropriate ISPs. The ability to use BitTorrent hasn't changed, and if it's a legal torrent then no one will be complaining.

I have a bunch of Linux distros that I torrent continuously (debian, lubuntu, and ubuntu-studio at the moment). I don't code so I help out the Linux community as I can. Will the ISP systems be smart enough to figure out what's being torrented or just dumb and track if your line shows any torrent participation at all 'you must be a pirate'? I suspect they only look for the torrent header codes and cannot see inside so cue up all kinds of additional backlash for the ISPs/etc. What is in the torrent transfer codes to show reliably what's in the included file?

The only worthwhile comment/question in the entire discussion... and no response. Everybody else is complaining that their freeloading and lawbreaking is going to get harder. Boo hoo. They sound like Goldman Sachs when congress was proposing to regulate financial markets.

But here is the real relevant question, will legitimate uses of this legitimate technology be punished now that the due process has been removed?

Can we please (pretty please!), once and for all stop using the term "pirate" instead of "copyright infringement" or maybe "illegal copying" (if you want to get a slightly harsher tone) — especially for headlines and story blurbs!?!?!

I know you know, but still: Pirates are people that get what they want on the high seas, normally using violence or threats of violence. Let us not play into RIAA/MPAA/FACT/...'s hands by using their propaganda language.

And you are right, "The Copyright Infringement Bay" has not got the same sound to it as "The Pirate Bay".

Can we please (pretty please!), once and for all stop using the term "pirate" instead of "copyright infringement" or maybe "illegal copying" (if you want to get a slightly harsher tone) — especially for headlines and story blurbs!?!?!

Yeah, and "computer" should only be used to describe people who manually do mathematical calculations as a profession. <rolls eyes> It's 2012, sperglord; wake up and smell the coffee. Software piracy has even made it into major dictionaries [merriam-webster.com].

Many people don't realize that AT&T, once broken up (at least on paper, never any data to support the actual owners financially divested), it has since reconstituted back into the original --- although "officially" Verizon is supposedly still a separate baby bell still --- on close examination, tracking all those threads of ownership through Vodafone and Racal, the majority ownership is still GE, which is indicative of the original ownership over a century ago!

I posted this earlier, but accidentally as an a/c. Or, do I look for good a/c comments and then post them as my own? I actually don't, and did post this earlier, but you still don't know that for sure. I need to cut back on the pain killers. Anyway...

My uverse router cannot handle more than a few hundred connections before it goes all wonky. Apparently, there isn't enough memory for the connection tracking. Unfortunately, the router does not let me turn off NAT and use it as a straight bridge, allowing me to use a real router. It does offer a mode called DMZPlus which sort-of accomplishes the same thing as bridging, but still uses the router's connection tracking. This all means that participating in torrents and all of the connections related to that use will bring my uverse router to its knees.

Enter the VPN. The beauty here is that all of those connections are handled on the other end of the VPN, freeing the resources of my powerfully weak uverse router. I set up a virtual machine running transmission-daemon and openvpn, firewalled it like crazy, and control it with transmission's wonderful ajax interface. This way, the uverse router deals with just one connection - the VPN. My days of rebooting my router after any torrent use are over.

My grandpa has an internet connection for the sole purpose of having cameras in his house to watch him. The cameras are not compatible with WiFi encryption. If someone logs in and uses his internet to download, and the ISP ends up cutting off his internet to stop "his piracy", we won't be able to see the cameras or if he's fallen or needs help. I wonder what the ISPs will have to say then if he ends up dying because we couldn't see him?

When an ISP starts denying you access to service or curtailing service you are paying for based on having conducted their own investigations or making determinations of guilt the lawsuits will be filed, the plaintiffs will win and the ISPs will stop.

Remember kids SOPA failing has consequences. The most salient amoung them with regards to this plan was the immunity grant to ISPs for playing judge jury and executioner against its paying customers.

Well, it depends. If the target was a person who'd been instrumental behind, say, mandatory sentencing for drug possession, I'd be all for it. It's basically a way of showing the people who make these decisions the practical ramifications of them - because they either cannot understand basic logic, or don't care because they don't think it will apply to them.

Likewise, if this was targeting, say, a participating ISP's CEO, or the family of an RIAA exec, I'd be all for it. They're introducing a process that punishes people while circumventing due process. Let's see it bite them in the ass a few times, like it will everyone else.

That's like saying "let's plant some dope in his car and then call the cops because we don't like him!"

Well, it has always been my understanding that regardless of your involvement in it, that person would be in the US guilty of the crime of "possession", whatever that word is actually supposed to mean.